Read Online Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess - Free Book Online

broke up with me. Over the phone! His exact words: “Pia, let’s face it. You’re a flight risk, it’s never gonna work. I’m just doing this before you do.”
    Even now, just thinking about it, I feel like I’ve been slapped. He dumped me because I was too fickle, too irresponsible, too untrustworthy. He dumped me because of who I am … or who he thought I was, anyway, and since he knew me better than anyone, it’s the same thing, right?
    I’d never known I could feel pain like that. Even remembering it now makes my throat ache with a big, painful tear-lump. You know that feeling?
    I was staying with Angie in Boston at the time and had the biggest anxiety attack of my life. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was racing, everything was spinning, and all I could think was it’s over it’s over .… Angie ran in minutes later, though it felt like hours. She told me later she’d heard a strange moaning sound I don’t even remember making.
    The next few weeks were … indescribable. I think that when a relationship ends, it’s a little bit like a death, and I was beside myself with grief.
    Angie doesn’t really do heart-to-hearts, but God, she was amazing during that time.… She listened while I boozed and ranted. She held my hair back when I puked and stockpiled Kleenex for my tears. She reprogrammed my iPod so I didn’t have to listen to songs that reminded me of Eddie. She picked me up at the end of each night, carried me home, and put me to bed. She was, quite simply, the perfect best friend.
    Then I started college, and decided to never talk about it again. It was the only way to contain my misery and act like Little Miss Happy Party Girl.
    So that’s the Eddie story. That’s why I’m always single and only have casual flings. Why would I ever want to go through heartbreak again?
    Urgh. I hate it when I think about Eddie. My brain goes back to him, over and over again, like when you’re eight and you have a tooth that’s about to fall out and you just wiggle it constantly.
    But unlike a tooth, Eddie never falls out of my head.
    My reverie is interrupted by Jonah walking up to me and tweaking my nose. “You want to see the honeybees, princess?”
    Wearing woolen gloves, Jonah takes the lid off a hive and pulls up a wooden tray. It’s thick with honeycomb and crawling with drowsy stoned bees.
    “I guess you gave them a buzz,” I say, slapping my thigh with delight at my own joke.
    “You are hil—wait for it—arious. Okay, check it out,” he says. “This one is full of honey. It kind of blows my mind. Give bees a home, and in return they create the sweetest thing in the world.”
    “What kind of flowers do they eat?” I ask, trying not to flinch every time a bee buzzes near me. “Have sex with. Whatever. Pollinize. Pollinate. You know what I mean.”
    “Any flower, really, or fruit trees, berry bushes,” he says. “They fly up to four miles for their pollen, so that could get them to Central Park. And there’s the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens for the lazy bee, of course.”
    I watch a fat little bee do two perfect figures of eight around the crowd, rubbing its fuzzy, chubby little body against its neighbors in a kind of soft-shoe shuffle.
    “They’re so beautiful up close,” I say softly. “So busy and happy. They’re sort of comforting, you know?”
    I stop myself, realizing that I’ve probably said something stupid again. I catch Jonah’s eye, but he’s not laughing. Instead, he leans in to kiss me, then at the last moment, something inside me says nope and I pull away.
    Thank God, Jonah takes it like a man. “I love the smell of rejection in the morning!”
    I laugh. “Sorry, dude. I’m just not…”
    “Nothing to apologize for,” he interrupts. “Easy come, easy go, sailor. Let’s get to work.”
    A couple of hours of honey-milking later, I’ve decided beekeeping is definitely not for me. It’s too dangerous (or I’m too wussy, whatever). I spent most